West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein's 10-year secret affair with ...

West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein's 10-year secret affair with Japanese fan is revealed in newly-unearthed cache of letters Leonard Bernstein exchanged 350 letters with Japanese Kunihiko Hashimoto He met the 26-year-old insurance worker backstage after a concert in JapanAfter spending the night together the pair wrote each other tender love letters

West Side Story's composer Leonard Bernstein had a ten-year love affair with a 26-year-old Japanese man who worked in insurance, an academic who found their previously unseen letters revealed.

Bernstein exchanged more than 350 letters with Kunihiko Hashimoto, now 66, after they met backstage following a New York Philharmonic concert in Tokyo in 1979. The pair spent the night together and Mr Hashimoto was devastated when Bernstein left.

The following day, he wrote: 'After you left Japan, my mind became vacant, because the one night and afternoon that we had were like a beautiful dream,' the Guardian reported.

Bernstein exchanged more than 350 letters with Kunihiko Hashimoto, now 66, after they met backstage following a New York Philharmonic concert in Tokyo in 1979. Pictured in France in 1987

Mari Yoshihara, a Japanese-American academic, found their letters at the Library of Congress in Washington. She says her 'jaw dropped'